‘Big Three’ credit rating firms maintain iron grip in Europe
4201 Min Read
By Marc Jones
LONDON (Reuters) – S&P Global, Moody’s and Fitch, the so-called ‘Big Three’ credit ratings agencies, are maintaining their dominance of Europe’s credit score market despite the region’s efforts to loosen their vice-like grip, data shows.
Data published this week by EU watchdog, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), showed the trio accounted for 92% of all paid-for ‘solicited’ ratings, which range from government bonds to company debt and structured finance.
Despite efforts by Brussels to encourage greater competition following the global financial crash and euro zone debt crisis, that figure has reduced only fractionally over the last decade.
The number of ratings firms registered in the 30-country European Economic Area (EEA30), which the ESMA data cover, has also been dropping steadily in recent years and now stands at 19 compared to 25 back in 2020.
Of the 141,600 credit ratings for EEA30 issuers and debt instruments at the end of last year, 79% were corporate ratings, 12% were government sovereign ratings and 9% rated structured finance products, the figures – which didn’t give a full agency-by-agency breakdown of their market shares – showed.
